Crude oil or petroleum is generally processed and refined in an industrial refinery and refined petroleum products such as such as asphalt base, fuel oil, diesel, gasoline, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas and the like can be separated based on their different boiling points. The petroleum products mostly contain varieties of hydrocarbons having different carbons numbers or structures and also contain oxygen compounds such as phenol, ketones, and carboxylic acids, nitrogen compounds such as indole, acridine, hydroxyquinolino, and aniline, sulfur compounds thiol, sulfide, disulfide, tetrahydrothiphene, thiophene, alkylthiophene, benzothiophene, dibenzothiophene, alkyl dibenzothiophene, transition metal compounds containing nickel, vanadium, molybdenum and the like, and inorganic salts.
Sulfur compound contained in the petroleum can be released as hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) that is also included as vast majority in natural gases and the hydrogen sulfide gas are processed and converted into elemental sulfur and hydrogen gas, which is known as “desulfurization”. In a certain example in the related art, Claus process produces elemental sulfur from hydrogen sulfide gas released from the refinery process by combustion and catalytic chemical reactions.
However, for conventional desulfurization processes, large and complex facilities are necessary and the chemical reactions during desulfurization are corrosive to those facilities. Moreover, efficiency of the desulfurization processes and operations is not sufficient to yield productivity. Further, other raw materials may be used for the current conventional desulfurization.